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Friday, July 14, 2017

14 July - Blogs I'm Following 1 of 2

Speaking at an air power conference, David Goldfein said the military needed to 'jump on' industry plans when it came to innovative technology such as Virgin Galactic (file pic) *Daily Mail:* *SAS could one day travel through space to get to war zones in an hour, says US Air Force head* * Chief of Staff David Goldfein raised idea of elite troops using mothership * Speaking at London conference, he said military needed innovative technology * He referred to Sir Richard Branson's space travel company, Virgin Galactic Special Forces troops could travel through space to get to war zones...more »

Screen capture of test footage. *Popular Mechanics*: *New Footage Shows the Perils of F-35 Flight Testing* Test pilots push the envelope, and sometimes the envelope pushes back. Previously unseen footage of the F-35 in flight testing lays bare an important fact: the work of test pilots is dangerous. A video of a F-35 Joint Strike Fighter flight safety seminar shows two incidents in which pilots risked their lives while attempting what will eventually be commonplace tasks—midair refueling and a night landing on a warship. *Read more* .... *WNU Editor*: Ouch!

*Phillip Schneider* - A warning to women who use these very common beauty products. The post Warning – Hair Dyes, Straighteners, Relaxers Now Shown to Increase Risk of Breast Cancer appeared first on Waking Times.

I never forget Bastille Day; it's my parents wedding anniversary and I thought that was the coolest thing about their marriage. That Donald Trump was the guest of honor for the celebration of it today is a little bizarre, considering what it was all about. Conservatives may be more comfortables referring to July 14 as *la Fête nationale rather *than as Bastille Day, but it does commemorate the historic storming on the Bastille and the oomph that gave the French Revolution. The spark that set the day off was the firing of Jacques Necker, the finance minister-- who was known to be s...more »

BEIRUT, LEBANON (10:30 P.M.) – The Russian Mil helicopter design bureau has completed a new transport helicopter, built specifically for the carrying-out of counter-terrorism operations: the Mi-171Sh-VN. The helicopter is the result of Russian combat experience in the Syrian theater. The Mi-171Sh-VN is a heavy overhaul of the older Mi-8/17 class of transport helicopters which […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

BEIRUT, LEBANON (10:20 P.M.) – The popular pro-government paramilitary group, Desert Hawks Brigade (Liwaa Suqour Al-Sahra), have withdrawn their forces from the ongoing east Hama offensive. While several reasons have been given for their departure, a local source reports discontent with the other pro-government units as the primary reason. The Desert Hawks were deployed for […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

BEIRUT, LEBANON (10:55 P.M.) – Russia’s State Duma unanimously ratified a protocol related to the deployment of personnel to Russia’s Hmeymim air base in Syria’s Latakia Governorate from Moscow on Friday. “At first, we were discussing an agreement of unlimited duration, however, while working with the Syrian side we jointly decided that we would lay […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

BEIRUT, LEBANON (10:05 P.M.) – Another round of clashes have broken out between the two largest jihadist groups in Syria, opposition activists reported from Idlib. According to local reports, Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham launched a powerful attack against their former allies from Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham in the eastern countryside of Idlib, resulting in a series of […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

Wikimedia Commons *Ciro Scotti, Fiscal Times*:* F-35 Total Costs Climb Past $1.5 Trillion — How High Will They Go?* Will it ever be clear what the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – the most expensive weapons system in history – has cost American taxpayers? On Monday, a Pentagon report to Congress predicted that the total cost of developing and producing 2,456 of the stealth jets, up from 2,443, may be as high as $406.5 billion. As Bloomberg first reported, that possible 7 percent increase — $27.5 billion — in so-called acquisition costs comes after years of declining estimates. It also...more »

*Michael Peck* *Security, * A debate that continues to rage. Inexpensive Russian and Chinese weapons, such as cyberwar and antiship missiles, threaten the West’s reliance on expensive arms such as aircraft carriers. “China and Russia appear to have focused many (but not all) their efforts on being able to put at risk the key Western assets that are large, few in number and expensive,” reads a recent study by the Royal United Services Institute, a British military think tank. “Western governments have become acutely aware of the problems of this financial imbalance in the counte...more »

*Michael Peck* *Security, Europe* Yes, this almost happenned. Switzerland emerged from World War II unconquered but not untarnished. Switzerland did survive as a free, democratic state in a Europe prostrate under the Nazi jackboot. But the Swiss also emerged under a cloud of collaboration with the Third Reich. Handling gold looted by the Nazis in return for minerals that kept the German war machine running, or keeping billions in assets belonging to Holocaust victims, is hardly something for the Swiss to yodel about. Yet it is equally unfair to brand the Swiss as Nazi puppets. ...more »

*Reuters:* *House backs massive increase in defense spending* WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of a massive annual defense bill on Friday, leaving out controversial amendments on transgender troops and climate policy but backing President Donald Trump's desire for a bigger, stronger military. The vote was 344-81 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets military policy and authorizes up to $696 billion in spending for the Department of Defense. Underscoring bipartisan support for higher defense spending in Congress...more »

America rules this world or so you think but really its an onion and when the skin is all pulled back City of London The world has been fighting back for centuries without clear victory but Germany stands as a statue to progressive thought success So now for the progressives in the world and in particular America to hand their collective hats on the Trump Russia collective is insane. Just because a former President brought down the twin towers without question does not mean everyone can control the reality distortion field to their program

Published on Jul 14, 2017 CNN’s epic fails keep getting worse, and their channel has become almost impossible to distinguish from an SNL skit. Here are just a few of the most recent examples. Media analyst Mark Dice has the story. end

"Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory. Their young, blue star clusters and pink star forming regions along sweeping spiral arms are guaranteed to attract attention. But small irregular galaxies form stars too, like NGC 4449, about 12 million light-years distant. Less than 20,000 light-years across, the small island universe is similar in size, and often compared to our Milky Way's satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). *Click image for larger size.* This remarkable Hubble Space Telescope close-up of the well-studied galaxy was reprocessed to highlight t...more »

*"The Fleeting Happiness of Life"* By Jocelyn Soriano "The truth is, there is no one place, however we may envy it, which would be indisputably good for us to occupy; much less for us to remain in. The zest of life, like the pleasure which we receive from a work of art, or from nature, comes from undulations –from inequalities; not from any monotony, even though it be the monotony of seeming perfection. The beauty of the landscape depends upon contrasts, and would be lost in one common surface of splendor. The grandeur of the waves is in the deep hollows, as well as the culminatin...more »

Far from adding a sinister twist to the meeting between Donald Trump Junior and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, the presence at the meeting of Rinat Akhmetshin, a US citizen, has provided a witness who has corroborated Donald Trump Junior's account of it. The post Donald Trump Junior’s account of meeting with Russian lawyer corroborated appeared first on The Duran.

Is there anything new that can be said about Organized Crime? It's been an integral part of his story from the beginning. And he runs his own crime family like a Mafia Don. People openly call his slow-witted eldest son "Fredo" and virtually all of his attorneys-- from Roy Cohn right up to the scumbags repping him today-- are sleazy criminal characters who work for mobsters, oligarchs and other anti-social types. The brand new *New Republic,* in a cover story called Married to the Mob, highlights just one area of Señor Tumpanzee's criminality-- his long-standing and very much bur...more »

Courtesy of the New York Times: *Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he flew to Paris to take part in Bastille Day celebrations, Mr. Trump offered his first extended account of a dramatic closed-door meeting he held with Mr. Putin last week in Hamburg, Germany. * *“I said to him, ‘Were you involved in the meddling with the election?’” Mr. Trump recalled. “He said, ‘Absolutely not. I was not involved.’ He was very strong on it. I then said to him, in a totally different way, ‘Were you involved with the meddling?’ He said, ‘I was not — absolutely not.’”* Putin then changed the...more »

Update July 14 A new study has looked into the Syrian civil war, which has been the poster child for those claiming climate causes human conflict. h\t to Mike Hulme who posted Climate Change and the Syrian Civil War Revisited The study concluded: “For proponents of the view that anthropogenic climate change will become a […]

From *Wikipedia: *The Boys from Brazil is a 1978 British-American science fiction thriller film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. It stars Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier and features James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen, Denholm Elliott, and Steve Guttenberg in supporting roles. The film is based on the 1976 novel of the same name by Ira Levin, and was nominated for three Academy Awards. *Read more* ....more »

Originally posted on Climate Etc.: By Javier The existence of a ~ 2400-year climate cycle, discovered in 1968 by Roger Bray, is supported by abundant evidence from vegetation changes, glacier re-advances, atmospheric changes reflected in alterations in wind patterns, oceanic temperature and salinity changes, drift ice abundance, and changes in precipitation and temperature. This is…

Originally posted on polarbearscience: I did considerable research on polar bear attacks for my thriller of a novel EATEN — which many readers are finding a welcome change from the numbers-and-statistics approach of science — and I have to say that a recently published scientific summary of this phenomenon (1880-2014) authored by biologist James Wilder and colleagues…

Originally posted on Watts Up With That?: Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach Over at Dr. Curry’s excellent website, she’s discussing the Red and Blue Team approach. If I ran the zoo and could re-examine the climate question, I’d want to look at what I see as the central misunderstanding in the current theory of climate.…

BEIRUT, LEBANON (10:50 P.M.) – Footage released on Friday captured the progress of the restoration to Aleppo’s key water pumping facility at al-Khafsa near the Euphrates. Director of the water distribution station in Aleppo Province, Abdul Wahab Habha, noted that the station was “a huge facility that provided water throughout the northern part of Syria […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

BEIRUT, LEBANON (12:50 A.M.) – The Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) elite 42nd Brigade (Ghiath Forces) of the 4th Mechanized Division has been given orders that they are to leave the Dara’a Governorate for the Syrian capital of Damascus. According to an officer from the unit, the 42nd Brigade will be in Damascus for a short […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

BEIRUT, LEBANON (10:00 P.M.) – An upgraded version of the S-300 PM2 air defence systems were deployed in military exercises in the Kaliningrad Region on Friday. The tactical exercises were conducted at a training ground on an undisclosed location, with the participation of servicemen from the Russian Aerospace Defence Force. Sergei Kurvaev, Commander of the […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

BEIRUT, LEBANON (11:30 P.M.) – The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has recovered several artifacts that were stolen from the ancient city of Palmyra by the so-called Islamic State (ISIL), the Syrian Arab News Agency reported on Friday. According to SANA the Syrian Arab Army and competent local authorities completed four major busts in and around […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

BEIRUT, LEBANON (11:00 P.M.) – The Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) elite Tiger Forces, backed up by various paramilitary allies, continue to slice through ISIS lines south of Resafa, capturing the town of Khirbet al-Halul and the Kader oil field today. These latest advances have put the Tiger Forces approximately 5 kilometers away from the town […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

BEIRUT, LEBANON (10:40 P.M.) – Today the entire might of the Syrian Arab Air Force (SyAAF) was deployed against ISIS throughout Syria. From Hama, to Homs, to Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, the SyAAF mustered every airworthy warplane in its arsenal, loaded them up with bombs, rockets, cannon rounds and missiles and unleashed it upon the […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

(TASS) Moscow finds the activities of the White Helmets organization increasingly questionable, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Friday. She pointed out that the organization had access to the areas in Syria where western journalists could not go. “It means, it is impossible to check the information that the White […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

[image: trump-jr-meeting-with-russian-lawyer-undermines-media-s-collusion-narrative] CNN, the* New York Times*, and their ilk do not seem to understand last summer's meeting between Trump, Jr. and a Russian lawyer — far from being a “smoking gun” — actually demolishes their Trump/Russia collusion narrative.

The latest from the federal NDP's leadership campaign. - Mainstreet has released what looks to be the most useful poll of the campaign so far, showing Charlie Angus and Niki Ashton in the lead among a substantial number of self-identified NDP members. But the gap between Angus and Ashton is tiny compared to the number of later-ballot vots, and all of the candidates look to have plenty of potential for growth based on the still-substantial number of undecided voters. - Ian Capstick offers his view of the noteworthy strategic choices that have been made so far in the campaign. And Chr...more »

*Ameen Izzadeen, Daily Mirror:* *If not peace, what’s next after ISIS defeat in Mosul?* Iraq’s victory over ISIS in Mosul is not the end of the road for the most ruthless terror group. Neither does it herald the beginning of a peaceful era in the land trod by prophets and peacemakers. The troubles are far from over, with little or no effort being made to address their root causes. In all likelihood, the next powder keg is Kurdistan. In many other regions of the world, periods of war follow periods of peace, but not so in the Middle East, birthplace of the world’s three main re...more »

Headline in the Irving papers - Killer gets life sentence with no chance of parole, for a teen's murder. The killer is a twenty year old from a poor and severely dysfunctional family. Just below it the story is the tale of a much more mature person in years, and a member of a wealthy family, who was found guilty a year ago of murdering his father apparently because daddy wouldn't give him enough money. However, he got bail almost immediately to appeal the case. _________________________________________________________________ For five hundred years, the European powers (and now join...more »

Assorted content to end your week. - Josh Bivens notes that international trade deals have been structured to maximize the cost of globalization for the workers excluded from the bargaining table. And Jon Queally points out that a massive majority of Americans see power disproportionately hoarded by the rich at the expense of everybody else. - So it should come as no surprise (as noted by Frank Clemente) that the corporate sector is avoiding making a fair contribution to funding collective programs - even while whining constantly about what little it is required to pitch in. And Ch...more »

*"USS Liberty" with other ship in background* *Could that be the Russian ship that* *came to the Liberty's rescue?* Fellow blogger, Northerntruthseeker has an interesting post today about the *RT Crosstalk* TV episode dealing with the sinking of the *"USS Liberty*", 50 years ago this year. *Crosstalk Episode "Remembering the Liberty"* This episode contains some explosive information...some "hidden history", if you like, about the War Crime perpetrated on the American Naval Ship "*USS Liberty*" on June 8, 1967 by the Israeli government of the day. I was familiar with most of the i...more »

Courtesy of the Daily Mail: *Bristol Palin has always said her one-year-old daughter Sailor Grace is her husband Dakota Meyer's mini-me, and now she's proud to note that their newborn Atlee Bay looks just like her. * *The 26-year-old mom took to Instagram on Thursday to share a photo of Sailor when she was a baby alongside an image of two-month-old Atlee, who was born in May. * *'Not even sorta kinda alike,' she wrote, adding that Sailor is a 'mini Dakota' while Atlee is a 'Palin baby'. * *And while they are both adorable, the sisters, who are just a little over a year apart, do ...more »

*Curt Mills* *Politics, * [image: Flickr/Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.] This week’s primetime knife fights with Max Boot and Ralph Peters are emblematic of the battle for the soul of the American Right. Though the word was actually never uttered, Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson cemented himself this week as the Right’s most prominent critic of neoconservatism. To be sure, Carlson rejects the term “neoconservatism,” and implicitly, its corollary on the Democratic side—liberal internationalism. In 2016, “the reigning Republican foreign-policy view—you can call it neoconserva...more »

*CNN:* *US kills leader of ISIS in Afghanistan* (CNN)The Pentagon said Friday that US forces have killed Abu Sayed, the leader of ISIS-Khorasan, the terror group's Afghanistan affiliate. The "Emir" of ISIS-K was killed "in a strike on the group's headquarters in Kunar Province, July 11," Chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said in a statement. US Navy Captain Bill Salvin, spokesman for US Forces Afghanistan provided additional detail of how Abu Sayed was killed. Salvin said he was killed in an airstrike by a US drone. The initial Pentagon statement described Sayed being killed...more »

Grammy Award-winning Northern Cheyenne flute player Joseph FireCrow Jr. is remembered for his huge smile and his ability to make his flute sing. FireCrow was born in Crow Agency, one of 10 children born to Joseph FireCrow Sr. and Elva Stands in Timber. He spent his early years on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. FireCrow began making and playing flutes in the summer of 1977 when he was 18 years old. His website states, “You can teach someone how to play the flute, but you can’t teach them how to make it sing.” FireCrow learned to make it sing. He is a seven-time Native American M...more »

*Eli Lake, Bloomberg:* *The Shady Dirt Diggers at the Heart of the Trump-Russia Scandal* *The Kremlin's drive to repeal sanctions against oligarchs is bigger than helping one U.S. presidential candidate.* As the Trump-Russia scandal reaches a tipping point, it's worth going back to the first big break in the story: the dossier. Back in January, when Buzzfeed first published an opposition research document on President Donald Trump's ties to Russia, it wasn't clear what to make of it. Compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, the research was unverified. But it was sig...more »

Yaqui Water Protector's Car Fire Bombed Article by Brenda Norrell Censored News Mario Luna, spokesperson for Vicam Yaqui, was kidnapped and falsely imprisoned for one year after the Vicam Traditional Authority manned a highway blockade on Yaqui land to protest the theft of their water. Now, his partner's car was fire bombed on June 27, at their home. Just two days earlier, Mario was

Video of gU6q_9syKCE Paul Gallagher, EIR Economics Editor, returns to our weekly webcast to discuss the urgent necessity of a multi-trillion dollar national infrastructure credit program, along with its contingent prerequisite, the restoration of Glass-Steagall. As Paul stated in the July 13 LaRouchePAC lead article: "President Trump's policy of cooperating with Putin and with Xi of China is courageous... What is not courageous, is the President's inability to take any steps against Wall Street, toward carrying out the economic recovery policies on which he ran." The American peop...more »

*Caroline Ryan* - There is no-one else on this planet who has undergone one of your unique experiences, let alone the full, assorted combination, The post Unleashing Your Unique Talents and Gifts in Service of a World in Need appeared first on Waking Times.

Texas hasn't been a big part of progressive plans for winning back Congress in recent years-- nor even Democratic Party plans. Most of the few Democrats the DCCC has backed there have been dreadfully corrupt conservatives like Pete Gallego, Vicente Gonzalez, Henry Cuellar and Filemon Vela. They were certainly openly hostile to Beto O'Rourke when he first ran for Congress in El Paso against another of their corrupt conservatives, Sylvester Reyes. And when progressive candidates like Tom Wakely have run the DCCC only had two buttons to push, one labeled "ignore" and one labeled "sab...more »

[image: sins-of-the-fathers-why-too-much-compassion-is-destroying-millennials] We balk at the notion that the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children. But a new study confirms that a society that coddles and enables its youth, dooms them to a life of anxiety, entitlement, and wasted potential.

[image: hawaii-s-judge-watson-loosens-trump-travel-ban] Judge Derrick Watson of the Federal District Court in Honolulu expanded on the Supreme Court’s definition of “bona fide relationship” regarding who may enter our country from terrorist-spawning countries.

[image: cussing-cultural-decay] While cuss words are in a sense “just words,” the message they send signals anger, violence, hate, incivility, and close-mindedness. Cancel cuss words or see criminality.

[image: u-of-missouri-misery-campus-activism-killing-enrollment] You can’t please all the people all the time, but you can displease most of them most of the time. The University of Missouri (UM) is learning this the hard way: It’s bleeding enrollment after left-wing protests — enabled by a left-wing school administration — racked the campus in 2015.

[image: trump-jr-s-email-want-to-talk-about-treason-okay] The obsession with Donald Trump Jr.’s “Russian” e-mail chain is just the latest example of what the Media/Democrat Party/Establishment Axis does best: engage in misdirection to confuse people about who America’s real enemies are.

[image: let-em-be-redskins] Had common sense not prevailed in the case brought against the “Slants,” more mischief loomed on the horizon — and not just the campaign against the “Redskins.” Would Holy Cross College be forced by an aggrieved Muslim to junk the use of “Crusaders” for its athletes?

*WNU Editor:* The AP report is here .... *Russian-American lobbyist says he was in Trump son’s meeting* (AP). The part of this AP report that I found interesting is the following .... .... *In his first public interview about the meeting, Akhmetshin said he accompanied Veselnitskaya to Trump Tower where they met an interpreter who participated in the meeting. He said he had learned about the meeting only that day when Veselnitskaya asked him to attend. He said he showed up in jeans and a T-shirt.During the meeting, Akhmetshin said Veselnitskaya brought with her a plastic folde...more »

The Trump administration has proposed that oil companies be allowed to continue dumping unlimited amounts of offshore fracking chemicals into the Gulf of Mexico but it seems this violates federal law (it also threatens marine wildlife, but- duh). “In a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Region 6 office on its proposed wastewater-discharge

On Saturday night on Panama City Beach, a family was enjoying the ocean when the kids, Noah, 11, and Stephen, 8, decided to chase the waves on their boogie boards. And before they knew it they were caught up in and swept away by a powerful rip current. RELATED ARTICLE: Man films ocean during storm

*Paul R. Pillar* *Diplomacy, United States* Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will stay in his job no more than two years, maximum. He is an honorable man who came to Washington with a patriotic sense of wanting to do something on behalf of his country. There is no reason to expect that he will be caught up in sleaze found elsewhere in the administration. His previous career demonstrated he has management and leadership ability, while giving him much experience in conducting business overseas. But the frustrations of his current position will be too much for him to bear for ve...more »

*Daniel McCarthy, Jacob Heilbrunn* *Politics, * A conversation between Jacob Heilbrunn and Daniel McCarthy about what everyone in Washington is talking about. *Editor's Note: In our latest Facebook Live interview (please like our Facebook page) Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the *National Interest,* sat down with Dan McCarthy, editor at large of the *American Conservative*, to discuss the latest melodrama gripping Washington.* *An excerpt of McCarthy's latest article, "Do Trump's Enemies Finally Have Their Smoking Gun?​" can be found below:* President Trump’s enemies think they have...more »

Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS at the Investigative Film Festival and Symposium. Facebook/Investigative Film Festival and Symposium *Politico: **Co-founder of firm behind Trump-Russia dossier will not testify before Senate next week* The co-founder of a political and corporate intelligence firm behind an explosive dossier alleging Russian intelligence influence over President Donald Trump will not testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to two sources familiar with his plans. The committee on Wednesday announced a July 19 hearing that listed Fusion GPS co-f...more »

*“The Valley of Despair: Seeds of Light”* by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM “Even in our darkest times, there are seeds of light within ourselves, we need only call them forward. Anyone who has walked through the valley of despair and come out the other side knows that even in that darkness, seeds of light can be found. Often their tendrils reach out of the gloom and into the daylight alongside the journeyer who emerges from that deep sorrow. When we find ourselves in a place of despair, it can help us to know this, so that we don’t give up. We can stop, take a deep breath, and remind...more »

*“Half Life”* "We walk through half our life as if it were a fever dream, barely touching the ground, our eyes half open, our heart half closed. Not half knowing who we are, we watch the ghost of us drift from room to room, through friends and lovers never quite as real as advertised. Not saying half we mean or meaning half we say, we dream ourselves from birth to birth seeking some true self. Until the fever breaks and the heart can not abide a moment longer as the rest of us awakens, summoned from the dream, not half caring for anything but love." ~ Stephen Levine

*Washington Free Beacon:* *Begala: We Should Debate Whether to ‘Blow Up’ Russian Agencies in Retaliation* CNN commentator and longtime Clinton ally Paul Begala said Wednesday that the U.S. should be debating whether to "blow up" agencies like the GRU in an apparent call for President Donald Trump to bomb Russia. Begala, who like many Democrats praised Barack Obama for mocking Mitt Romney's description of Russia as "our No. 1 geopolitical foe" in 2012, said on CNN that Russia is a "hostile foreign power" and the Trump administration should be "retaliating massively" for Russian med...more »

*Jogging news update:* looks like I've just jogged my first half marathon I know my pace, if I really push it, I can do seven miles in fifty minutes. I've been close to that plenty of times. So, let's say, were I to do two hours, that'd be (conservatively) fourteen miles. Two times seven miles per hour. I've always wondered if I could jog for two hours, then my work colleague who's in her twenties was going on about training for her first half marathon... I was like (chin-rub) fished in by the concept of running a half marathon. Set out this fine evening at exactly 6:17 p.m. and ama...more »

Courtesy of TPM: *Peter W. Smith, the Republican operative who sought to obtain and publicize emails he thought were stolen from Hillary Clinton’s private server, committed suicide days after he told a reporter about his efforts, according to the Chicago Tribune. * *The Chicago Tribune reported Thursday night, citing a Minnesota state death record filed in Olmsted County, that Smith killed himself on May 14 days after he talked to the Wall Street Journal about his hunt for Clinton’s emails. That account was also included in a medical examiner’s report and a Rochester police repor...more »

DAMASCUS, SYRIA (8:40 P.M) – On Friday afternoon, US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions conceded control of more desert areas to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) as the latter secured four points near the border with Jordan. Heavily supported by paramilitary contingents including Lebanese Hezbollah, the SAA imposed full control over the strategic high-points of […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

DAMASCUS, SYRIA (7:00 P.M) – On Friday, ISIS militants lost control of two important towns east of Salamiyah after the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) 5th Legion unleashed a large-scale operation. Striking deep into ISIS’ interior lines, the Russian-trained units overran the towns of Zanoubah and Qatteshah along with the Koujan hills and their surrounding farms. […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

DAMASCUS,SYRIA (3:30 P.M.) – On Friday around noon, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) liberated two more desert areas in Raqqa province from the Islamic State. Pushing further south of the M-42 highway after the liberation of four neighbouring points the day before, the SAA’s Tiger Forces took control of Khirbel Al-Halul and Al-Hagl Al-Kabeer earlier […] Source: AMN - Al-Masdar News | المصدر نيوز

BBC One's *London News *tonight had a report on female Spanish scientists living and working in London. Naturally, BBC reporter Sarah Harris posed this very 'BBC' question: "But with Brexit looming, will these talented female researchers move on again?" Why can't BBC reporters see Brexit as anything other than some kind of menacing iceberg destined to bring us all to grief?

*FRIDAY, JULY 14, 2017The New York Times takes it from there:* We kid you not. Yesterday morning, the "Here to Help" feature on the New York Times' page A3 took a gloomy turn. Someone at the Times was scared. Here's how the feature started: *Here to Help* *HOW TO PACK AN EMERGENCY KIT FOR DISASTERS* No matter where you live, your emergency kit for disasters, man-made or otherwise, should always include a go-bag. Here's what to put in yours. The feature helped us know what to include in eight categories, including Mylar Blankets and Dust Masks. Was this "Here to Help" feature reall...more »

It won't matter if all the ice melts and seas rise 100 feet, even if frogs rain from the skies and dogs and cats are living together, one species will be around until the sun explodes. That species is the eight-legged micro-animal tardigrade, the world's most indestructible species. read more

This is a guest post from Seva Gunitsky, an associate professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His book Aftershocks: Great Powers and Domestic Reforms in the Twentieth Century was recently published by Princeton University Press. To understand the roots of the collusion, set aside Putin and follow the money. In […]

*Washington Examiner*: *Sebastian Gorka: Trump would return Russian compounds to give 'collaboration' a chance* Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Trump, said Thursday the Trump administration is weighing the return of two Russian diplomatic compounds because it wants to give "collaboration and cooperation a chance." "We want to give collaboration and cooperation a chance," Gorka told CNN. "The fact is we may not share the same philosophy, we may not share the same type of statesman view of the world but the fact is there are some issues of common concern." The Obama ...more »

[image: undefined] Oh, it was glorious fun, yielding the kind of satisfaction that us anti-interventionists rarely get to enjoy: not one but two prominent neoconservatives who have been wrong about everything for the past decade – yet never held accountable – getting taken down on national television. Tucker Carlson, whose show is a shining light of reason in a fast-darkening world, has performed a public service by demolishing both Ralph Peters and Max Boot on successive shows. But these two encounters with evil weren’t just fun to watch, they’re also highly instructive for what th...more »

Originally posted on Watts Up With That?: I thought I’d take a moment from my R&R to write about all the hullabaloo surrounding the calving of the large iceberg off the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica. First, a few of the headlines: LA Times: After Antarctica sheds a trillion-ton block of ice, the world asks:…

Originally posted on polarbearscience: Yes, Arctic sea ice has declined since satellite records began in 1979 but polar bears have adjusted well to this change, especially to the abrupt decline to low summer sea ice levels that have been the norm since 2007. Some polar bear subpopulations have indeed spent more time on land in…

*FRIDAY, JULY 14, 2017An unfortunate cultural portrait:* Tomorrow, we plan to review the way the cable corps has limned that now-famous meeting in which, as David Brooks has complained, Don Junior sought "information." We plan to list a few ways Trump types may turn out to have broken the law (or not). At the same time, we plan to list a few absurdities about the pundit corps' reaction to what is known about that now-famous meeting, at which "information" was sought. For today, we'll direct you to an unfortunate report from atop the first page of today's Washington Post Style sect...more »

My copy of *The Spectator *dropped through the letter box today and the first thing I read was Charles Moore's *Spectator Notes*. There's quite a BBC theme this week. I In the row which has rumbled on about Laura Kuenssberg’s allegedly biased coverage of the general election, one significant factor has not come into the public domain. Early in the campaign, Kuenssberg was assailed by Labour supporters. But later on, and in the post-election recriminations, it was Conservative supporters who were the more annoyed with her. Perhaps this is simply explained by the fact that Labour d...more »

*Daily Mail*: *Au revoir! Donald Trump gives Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron a long goodbye - complete with another tug-of-war handshake – at the end of a trip to Paris for Bastille Day* * President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump took in the splendor of Bastille Day, a national holiday celebrating France's independence, this morning in Paris * This year's celebration coincides with the arrival of American troops 100 years ago in France on June 26, 1917 * The US president and his wife sat front and center in a VIP reviewing stand below the Luxor Obelisk in Place de la Concor...more »

YouTube *Daily Mail*: *China has 'almost doubled the fighting power of its aircraft carrier' as Beijing conducts drill on the warship near Taiwan Strait* * The exercises occurred on aircraft carrier The Liaoning yesterday, reports said * J-15 jets practised taking off, landing and flying in 'complicated' conditions * Chinese media claimed the fighters can now carry out mid-air refuelling * The Liaoning sailed into Taiwan on July 12, the fourth time in recent months China has reportedly conducted a series of combat exercises on its aircraft carrier Lianing near the Taiwan Strait....more »

Slate's Ben Matthis-Lilley is puzzled by Ben Sasse: Ben Sasse is not OK with Donald Trump’s tweets. On June 29, the president began yet another day by barfing out insults on Twitter, this time regarding MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski’s face. Sasse was one of the first Republicans to respond. “Please just stop,” wrote Nebraska’s 45-year-old junior senator. “This isn’t normal and it’s beneath the dignity of your office.” Dignity is one of Ben Sasse’s things. He’s also into duty, thoughtfulness, empiricism, and respect for democratic traditions—and while most politicians would probably cl...more »

*"They Live: Choose Before You Die"* by Doug “Uncola” Lynn "Sometimes, during the summers, I like to stay up late. When not reading or writing, I will usually resort to watching a series on television. I enjoy series because the character development and storylines are far more in-depth than what is viewed in a mere two-hour movie; although I do watch them as well. On HBO, I have experienced The Sopranos, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood, True Blood, and a few others. On AMC, it was Breaking Bad and I still watch The Walking Dead. What I like about Netflix, however, is the abil...more »

TEPCO is announcing that its going to be dumping tritiated water into the sea: Fukushima’s tritiated water to be dumped into sea, Tepco chief says (July 14, 2017). The Japan Times, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/07/14/national/science-health/tepco-says-decision-already-made-release-radioactive-low-toxic-tritium-sea-fishermen-irate/#.WWjs_lHdnwk Despite the objections of local fishermen, the tritium-tainted water stored at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant will be dumped into the sea, a top official at Tokyo Electric says. “The decision has already been made,” Takashi Kawa...more »

Ben Stimpson is being punished for being a terrorist, but he is not a terrorist and nor are the people of Donbass. The fact that Stimpson never fired a shot in anger while a UK man who killed while fighting with the neo-Nazi Azov battalion is symptomatic of something worse than victor's justice--it is an abuse of the justice system in the name of foreign policy. The post UK man faces prison for volunteering in Donbass appeared first on The Duran.

On Thursday morning, Bernie was a guest of the newly not-Republican-anymore Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. "It's not just his temperament and it's not just his stupid tweets," he told Joe and Mika. "Do not forget for a second that the policies that the policies that he is proposing are the most destructive policies being proposed in our lifetimes. This legislation that he is urging Congress to pass would throw 23 million Americans off of health insurance. How many of those people will die, we don't know-- but thousands of them will." Scarborough was an ultra-conservative congressman f...more »

[image: undefined] The Iraqi city of Mosul. The Syrian city of Aleppo. Both 'liberated' in recent months from radical jihadist terror groups. But while one anti-terrorist operation has been lauded in the West, the other was fiercely denounced. The very different ways in which the respective 'liberations' were portrayed tells us much about the way war propaganda works in the so-called free world. For the last few days we've been fed triumphant reports on western news media about the 'liberation" of Mosul from ISIS. US President Donald Trump issued a White House Statement congratula...more »

[image: undefined] During the time that US Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster are reviewing the US military policy in Afghanistan, The New York Times ran a story on July 10, 2017 that exposed a threat that will upend US defense strategy and return it to a bitter past. The Times story was centered around the following paragraph: “Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International, have developed proposals to ...more »

Courtesy of HuffPo: *Following its most successful season in more than two decades, “Saturday Night Live” secured 22 Emmy nominations on Thursday, the most in its decades-long history.* *The NBC variety show transformed into something more over the course of its 42nd season, as millions of liberal-minded people across the country looked to Lorne Michaels and his cast to help make sense of the country’s election of President Donald Trump. * *That interest was reflected in its ratings ― it was the most watched season in more than two decades ― and now in its Emmy nominations, as th...more »

*Omar Khadr* *On July 27, 2002, during** the US air bombing of the home he was staying in in Afghanistan, when he was 15, Omar Khadr (above) lost the sight of one eye and some of the sight in the other. He was temporarily blinded and severely wounded (concussed and unconscious)...yet he managed to somehow find a grenade in the rubble and toss it at an American soldier. Oh, and on 9/11.... three NYC structured steel skyscrapers (two with solid metal cores and one which had not been hit by a plane...and had only small fires) collapsed into pulverized concrete and molten steel in 6.5...more »

'Two Ukrainian tourists, reported to be women, have been killed in mass stabbings at a hotel in the popular Red Sea resort of Hurghada, Egyptian medical officials say. At least four other people were injured and a man has been arrested.The suspect is being questioned by police to determine his motives, the interior ministry said. The attacker appears to have swum from a nearby public beach to gain access to the resort, officials say.' The BBC are desperately hoping that this wasn't an attack by Islamist(s). We'll see... More here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-4061...more »

Back in 1950’s, the US military conducted a test to see whether San Francisco’s famous fog could be used to help spread a biological weapon. Yes, you read that correctly. In the 50’s the US perpetrated a simulated germ-warfare attack on its own people. And no one knew. While this story seems crazy (although not to

If you have neuroma, a painful condition caused by an inflamed nerve in the ball of the foot, and have wondered about whether or not there are effective home treatments or if you are looking for nonsurgical ways to reduce the pain of Morton’s neuroma, look no further. RELATED ARTICLE: Painkiller deaths drop by 25% in

By Dr. Mercola Tai Chi, a branch of Qigong, has been practiced for over 2,000 years. Qigong has an even longer history, dating back about 5,000 years. Originating in China, these exercises are said to balance and harness qi (also spelled chi), or “life energy,” and is frequently described as meditation in motion, as the activity

*The 10 Steps to Impeach a President*It won’t be easy to impeach Donald Trump. No president in American history has ever been convicted on articles of impeachment. Only two presidents so far have been impeached by the House and had that impeachment go to the Senate for trial. The first was Andrew Johnson, in 1868, when the Senate came one vote short of convicting him. The next was 131 years later, in 1999, when Bill Clinton’s impeachment went to the Senate. 50 Senators voted to convict Clinton, 17 votes short of what was needed. What about Richard Nixon? He resigned early in this ...more »

In the course of discussing the problems faced by MUFON, I was contacted by Michael Horn, who is the US representative of Billy Meier. Meier is, of course, the Billy Meierman who claims contact with alien creatures going back to 1975, or maybe even earlier depending on whether you count his alleged childhood contacts in that number. I told Horn in the initial conversation that I was not a fan of Meier, knew something of the case, but found Horn’s claim about MUFON ignoring Meier to be of interest in what I was doing. Horn had told me that MUFON refused to book him into their Symposi...more »

Published on Jul 12, 2017 A delegation led by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has visited Ukraine this week. In 2015, the western military alliance started deploying forces in Central and Eastern Europe citing the Ukrainian crisis. Experts say the western propaganda and its branding of Russia an aggressive power as well as its troop […]

Published on Jul 13, 2017 The issue of military drills has again fueled tensions between NATO and Russia. While Moscow is opposed to NATO war games close to its borders, the western military alliance is concerned about a joint Russia-Belarus military drill scheduled for September. The issue dominated a NATO-Russia Council meeting in Belgium. end

*CNN:* *Chinese spy ship lurks off coast of Alaska during missile defense test* (CNN)A Chinese spy ship has been sailing in international waters off the coast of Alaska for several days, having first arrived in the area shortly before the test of a US missile defense system, multiple US officials have told CNN. US Navy Capt. Scott Miller, spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the ship is believed to be a "communications" or "intelligence" vessel and confirmed it has been in the area for the last few days. Miller would not speculate on the reason for...more »

Baghdadi and ISIS militants who were killed before him. (Supplied) *Reuters:* *U.S. cannot prove Islamic State chief is dead: U.S. defense secretary* WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday the United States could not prove that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was dead. Earlier this week, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had "confirmed information" that Baghdadi had been killed, but Western and Iraqi officials have been skeptical. "If we knew, we would tell you. Right now, I can't confirm or deny it," Mattis said. "Our appr...more »

*July 14, 2017* (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - In an effort to reinforce public perception that policy changes when a new administration assumes the White House, US and European analysts have made several attempts to push forward narratives describing US President Donald Trump's foreign policy as "confused" or "unclear" in contrast to his predecessor, President Barrack Obama. However, upon closer examination, from the Middle East to Asia Pacific, US foreign policy has continued, virtually uninterrupted, for decades. Thailand-based newspaper, The Nation, in an article titled, "Asean under ...more »

A volunteer researcher at Florida Atlantic University fabricated the results of mouse experiments over a 14-day period in June, 2016, according to a new finding issued by the U.S Office of Research Integrity (ORI). According to the ORI, Alec Mirchandani made up the results of behavioral experiments to make it seem as if he had done the […] The post Volunteer researcher faked weeks’ worth of data appeared first on Retraction Watch.

“Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.” - Frederick Buechner

*“Eyeless in Gaza”* by Uri Avnery "I have a unique confession to make: I like Gaza. Yes, I like this faraway corner of Palestine, the narrow strip on the way to Egypt, in which two million human beings are crowded, and which is closer to hell than to heaven. My heart goes out to them. I have spent quite a lot of time in the Strip. Once or twice I stayed there with Rachel for a couple of days. I became friendly with some people whom I admired, people like Dr. Haidar Abd-al-Shafi, the leftist doctor who set up the Gazan health system, and Rashad al-Shawa, the former Mayor, an aristo...more »

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I've been 'around' for a few years now, pursuing the shifting goal of a sharable home-made surfers resource site focused on ease of use and variety of mostly adult ( whoa : I didn't say prurient ) content.